From the Hill:
The Senate Judiciary Committee’s ranking Republican, Arlen Specter (Pa.), emerged from a crucial Monday briefing and gave the Bush administration 18 hours to resolve the controversy over apparent contradictions in Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s congressional testimony.
Gonzales took issue last week with former Deputy Attorney General James Comey’s description of internal dissent in 2004 over the legal authority for the National Security Agency’s (NSA) warrantless eavesdropping program. Frustrated Democrats called for a special prosecutor to investigate Gonzales for perjury, noting that several officials have publicly echoed Comey’s account. Those calls prompted Specter to request a classified briefing to clear up the dispute.
Specter aides released a statement late Monday that suggested a bombshell to come on Tuesday afternoon.
Here's analysis from Marcy Wheeler: Crimes on top of Crimes (hat tip to jeremybloom in the comments):
Commentators on the right and the left agree. When Alberto Gonzales claimed that "there has not been any serious disagreement about the program that the president has confirmed" when he testified about the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretap program before the Senate in February 2006, he was parsing wildly.
Here's Gonzales' logic: The president confirmed "the program" in December 2005. By that time, the administration had made changes to "the program" that satisfied the department of justice that it was legal. So "the program" the president confirmed no longer had any of those nasty illegal features that led to a disagreement between DOJ and the administration in March 2004.
Now, Cheney was asked by Larry King about the infamous hospital visit regarding (this?) program by Gonzo/Card in an interview to air tonight whether, as the New York Times editorialized, he was the one who sent them:
Q So you didn't send them to get permission.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I don't recall that I was the one who sent them to the hospital.
Amazing how memory lapses with age. But here's the thing, the letter appears to be not from the White House, but from the Department of Justice according to Snow. (UPDATE: This letter was from the Dir of National Intelligence, maybe another one forthcoming from DOJ):
QUESTION: Tony, has a letter gone to the Hill, specifically to Senator Specter, concerning Alberto Gonzales?
SNOW: No. There will be something going up to the Hill. It will be a little bit later. It’s not quite meeting the noon deadline. But he in fact will get a response today.
First, we thank Senator Specter. He agreed to get himself read into the program yesterday. He received a briefing and he had some questions. And those questions are going to be answered. They’ll be answered in the course of the day. But they have not yet been provided. We expect within the next few hours that he’ll have a full response.
QUESTION: Tony, following on that, Senator Specter put out this statement saying that the letter would be available to the news media, it would address the questions about the attorney general testifying accurately.
You had an interesting time trying to parse the different language the other day when we pressed about it. How will this letter...
SNOW: I will let the documents speak for themselves and he’ll have an opportunity.
QUESTION: Who put it together?
SNOW: Again, at this point — it’s not coming out of the White House.
*****
QUESTION: To clarify this letter, you say it’s not coming from White House. It’s coming from the Justice Department?
SNOW: They will hear — he will hear from the Justice Department.
UPDATE:
Again, via Thinkprogress (and another tip to jeremybloom in the comments)the letter is from Admiral McConnell, Dir of National Intelligence:
The key line in this letter says one particular aspect of these activities, and nothing more, was publicly acknowledged by the President and described in December of 2005. That is what Gonzales says was the Terrorist Surveillance Program. So what other program are they talking about? Again, they say it’s classified. It’s top secret. The third line in the letter is key: This is the only aspect of the NSA activities that can be discussed publicly. So what they’re saying is everything else is secret but what he was talking about specifically was the Terrorist Surveillance Program.
Please go see the video from CNN at Thinkprogress, what I can transcribe is "a number of such programs were authorized in one order". But everything is classified.
UPDATE II:
Now this is rich (from AP via Yahoo News, Spy chief defends Gonzales' statement:
The reason put forward for Gonzales' claim: The program wasn't given that name until 2005, a year after his now-famous effort to get then-Attorney General John Ashcroft to endorse it.
"I understand that the phrase 'Terrorist Surveillance Program' was not used prior to 2006 to refer to the activities authorized by the president," Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell wrote in a letter to Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa.
and
McConnell's letter left the clear impression that, technically, there were no discrepancies on the matter of the hospital visit.
It appears they are saying "go suck, Arlen!", while parsing heavily to avoid impeachment! Maybe Specter is not buying in yet (same AP source):
After reading the letter, Specter neither accepted McConnell's explanation nor absolved Gonzales of questions about his credibility. Specter said he was waiting for a separate letter from the attorney general. "If he doesn't have a plausible explanation, then he hasn't leveled with the committee," Specter said on CNN.
UPDATE III: Looks like no letter from the DOJ has been forthcoming today, or at least nobody has released one publicly. Here's what Specter had to say about that (CNN interview with Arlen Specter):
Wolf Blitzer: Does this clarify on behalf on Alberto Gonzales that he didn't lie?
Specter: I'm not prepared to say until we get Attorney General Gonzales' letter. I was promised this letter from Admiral McConnell and a letter from Attorney General Gonzales at noon. This one came at mid-afternoon and I've been asked not to comment on it until we have the Gonzales letter. But the Gonzales letter will, in effect, interpret this letter....
LAST UPDATE:
The letter from DOJ i.e. Gonzo has been released.
"No serious disagreement about this activity later called the TSP"..."Other aspects of the NSA's activities referenced in the DNI's letter did precipitate very serious disagreement"
What activities, you ask? From the DNI's letter, "A number of these intelligence activities were authorized (by the President) in one order" which was renewed every 45 days. The TSP "is the only aspect of these activities" which has been discussed publicly, and had to do with Al Quaeda communications in & out of the country. So this "aspect" was given the name TSP. although Gonzo calls it an "activity".
So there you have it: aspects, activities and ass-covering!
For a great diary with tons of background, please go to litigatormom's diary, DOJ Letter: Does It Exonerate Abu G? What do you think?
Also see drational's diary Echoes of Watergate, 2001-2007 and his comment below, here's a taste:
Comey's written testimony suggests the program had a name and it was classified:
